The Impossible Stories: How to Changethe World Without Really Caring
by Eduard Tubin
Summary: This is actually an alternative Avatar world story where Azula went with her mom into banishment in Ba Sing Se. At the end of the world, she has become a science minded high school student with a friend named Karo.


**The Impossible Stories of the Tea Shop**

**or**

**How to Change the World without Really Caring**

"How long have we known each other?" Karo leaned against his metal locker and held a pamphlet for the November Civic Elections for Ba Sing Se's city council. The Earth King had the titles, all the regal prestige and impeccable genetic credentials and the city council actually ran the city.

Azula closed her locker. "About three or four years and in that time, you have never tried to sell me on any political cause."

"I hate socialism." Karo stated bluntly as he held up the pamphlet. "_Dao Shi Kuong of the Three Chins_ - not a criminal organization - sent a plea for _my_ vote. I found this in our mailbox. Have they lowered the voting age to include a fourteen year old insecure Fire Nation refugee?"

"My mom has a voting card." Azula looked into a brown paper bag. "Since arriving here, I've discovered neither my mother nor_ Lunch Lady Lee _can cook." Azula rummaged in the brown paper bag.

"Your mom runs a tea shop." Karo reminded Azula as he waited anxiously for either a banana or a papaya - either of which he found agreeable.

"She has a staff and _the__y don't_ prepare my brown bag lunch."

"We live in a northern climate and it often snows before hockey season. The Fire Nation has wreaked havoc on our commercial ties to the tropics and yet every day, _every day_ I have a banana in my lunch." She held out the banana. "You are a fan of tropical fruit - enjoy. I hate bananas."

"What guarantee do I have that this slab of a man won't die of a heart attack five seconds into his term in office?" Karo followed Azula down the hall and rustled change in his pocket. "I can spot you a few bronze pieces for some of _Lunch Lady Lee's_ french fries and whatever that pink liquid is. _Chimpanzee Choice_? Your mom has good taste in bananas."

Azula and Karo walked into the large room full of plywood tables and chairs that was the high school cafeteria. They had a table they shared with the half dozen other Fire Nation refugees although on this day, they had their customary table to themselves. Karo began to peel a banana as Azula picked up a metal tray and waited for the line to move.

"Would you support a motion to lower the voting age to fourteen?" Karo spoke before he took a bite out of his banana.

"I dislike democracy as a matter of principle." Azula told Karo and then faced an old stooped lady in a hairnet standing behind the counter. She ordered french fries and a glass of pink juice - something was always something not quite like grapefruit. "Your home room elected you to represent _Room 26_ in student council and the very same council has put you on the yearbook committee the last two years. You like democracy when it works in your favor."

Karo reached in his pocket and dropped the coins to pay for Azula's repast into the waiting hand of the junior lunch lady - the one in her forties as he walked past the till. He threw the banana peel into the green metal bin and followed Azula.

"What else do you have in that lunch?" Karo asked as he sat down.

Karo rummaged through his locker. "I have a yearbook meeting and I have a cowlick that won't go away."

"You always have that." Azula leaned back on her locker and looked at her nails. "Should I bleach your freckles and make you a redhead? If you kept that locker neat, you'd never have to fly into a last minute panic when you looked for your art portfolio." Azula reached into Karo's locker and pulled out a brick red cardboard file folder that fastened shut with a string. "I know how you think better than you do. I'll see you after Science Club." She handed Karo his portfolio. "Is today Wednesday? I thought Wednesday was your band dork practice."

"Today is Wednesday and its yearbook committee day," Karo reached in his locker as he held his art portfolio. "I hope its not band rehearsal. I have my oboe in my locker - wait, you sit beside me and play the bassoon!"

A tall girl with red hair in a yellow and green earth toned cheer leading outfit came up to Azula and Karo. She patted down her skirt. "Which one of you know a creepy fat old man with a white beard named Iroh?" The girl held her orange pom poms at her side. "He wandered into the gym when we were beginning rehearsal and asked to see you - _Azula_."

"We've both read that story about the mad scientist who raised the extinct dinosaurs from the dead? I think the velociraptors evolved into the modern day cheer leader." Azula shot daggers at the girl. "Where is my uncle now?"

"In the gym," the girl pointed with her handshaking in disapproval, "he thought you might be in band dork practice."

"Guess who will come crying to me for a bassoon solo?" Azula muttered. "One day Botan! A smart ass remark evades me." Azula walked off in the direction of the gym. "Better see why my uncle came down here before the words _'morals charge'_ crop up in conversation around the dinner table."

"Is she always cranky?" Botan asked Karo.

Karo shrugged as he closed his locker. "You belong to two different niches of the school ecosystem. You are a cheer leader and she hangs with the science students. I don't think it's you, I think she's worried her uncle might have planned to do something a bit off. Her uncle has a long tradition of doing _'off'_ things."

"Well, you did a really nice job on the banners." Botan smiled. "Thanks for the work."

"Glad to help." Karo had no problem with most people except communists and his easy going attitude had won him respect. He had a degree of popularity with many groups because he was the best artist in the school and the school always had the best looking banners. Azula didn't have many friends but she had the best academic record in the school which meant she had tutored some of the less attentive cheerleaders. Botan disliked Azula because she envied the fact Azula had great beauty and a fantastic mind and Karo had come to grow accustomed to the constant friction between the two of them.

* * *

"When it gets dark at five in the afternoon, this tells me that the long, dark winter has begun." Azula kicked the leaves from a maple tree that had fallen on the sidewalk. "My uncle came down to show me a telegram from my brother."

"When I lent you a pencil on the first day we met at lunch, you told me I looked Fire Nation." Karo walked down the street pulling on his backpack. "I told you I was the son of a an abusive father in the Fire Nation navy and you told me you were Princess Azula." Karo looked up at his breath as the lamp lighter went along the street lighting the street lights. "I met your mom who told me she was banished by _Fire Lord Ozai_ and other details that made me feel out of my league. The War is over and shouldn't your brother be rebuilding the world not visiting?"

"Zuko wants to spend time with my mother."

Karo waited for a tram to speed by before he attempted to cross the street.

"He's coming to the tea shop to visit! He wants to see our mother." Azula crossed the intersection looking both ways for speeding ostrich horse carriages. She threw up her arms in exasperated frustration."My brother and I never got along. My mother went into banishment with me because she didn't think I was strong enough to resist my father's influence." Azula pulled nervously at the strap of her back pack. "I had the more powerful fire bending than Zuko but my father didn't take girls seriously and never took me seriously because I had _'problems'_."

Karo knew all of this but Azula always grew dour and depressed talking about her family and needed to vent. Karo had the good fortune of having never known his father: his mother had left for the relative safety of Ba Sing Se when he was three and he had little knowledge of his father except that he had died in the Siege of the North.

"I have no idea what to say." Karo looked down at the sidewalk. "I wouldn't accuse your father of great depth of character. I think most normal kids might have a complex if they grew up with your father - I'd have gone insane trying to live up to _his_ expectations. The man banished his own son and wife. I don't mean that as an insult because I think Iroh and Ursa are decent people who did their best to raise you."

"My father was a maniac." Azula said bluntly. "I don't know my brother and I don't want to be involved in the politics of the Fire Nation." Azula walked beside Karo. "I like my life as a student. I have complaints like the _snooty_ Miss Botan the captain of the cheerleaders but who doesn't meet people in this life they dislike. I like the fact I don't have to suck up to my dad, I like the math club, the band and the fact my bassoon is the deadliest weapon I own."

Karo nearly hit the chalkboard Uncle Iroh had set out on the cobbled sidewalk but he stumbled around it. "When does this meeting take place?"

"The telegram didn't say." Azula grabbed Karo's collar and helped guide him past the sign. "He says Zuko will tell us in the next telegram. My brother is a very important and powerful man now." Azula did nothing to hide her sarcasm.

Azula and Karo sat in study hall during their morning spare. _Northwood__s__ High School_ had received its charter before the War and was a collection of four wings of three story classical brick architectures and large open rooms like the gym, study hall, library and cafeteria.

The study hall buzzed with half a dozen conversations and the murmurings of students not using study hall for studying. The study hall was a large, square boring looking room with cafeteria style tables that seated four to six students each. Tall glass windows let in the dim autumn daylight through green, yellow and orange diamond shaped stained glass panels. All students had to spend their spare period in study hall or in the adjacent library and the principle poked his head in the door to check on the students now using the hall.

Karo had never had much luck with math, rather he had proven average at it and his artistic and musical skills had all come to him with little effort. He had lurched through that morning's math class wondering if his homework might actually break that impossible to break B Minus barrier. He had never figured out why Azula could do the same kinds of algebraic problems or quadratic equations in her head.

Azula had her chemistry textbook out and actually spent time studying the Periodic Table of the Elements. She didn't need to concentrate on her homework: she had the intellectual reserves to appear brilliant even in subjects she had never had any interest. Karo said nothing but this behavior struck him as odd.

"How many Lanthanide elements can you name off the top of your head?" Azula looked at Karo as a strange green and yellow light shone on her forehead.

"Lantha - what?" Karo tapped his pencil on the page of his math text which illustrated _Simpson's Rule_. "You made that up just now."

"Know your periodic table as you know yourself." Azula pointed her slide rule. "I have a chemistry exam next period and I ask because I can't remember how to spell Praseodymium."

"That day in the chemistry lab when you told me Lithium wasn't dangerous, you remember the _Lithium Incident_?" Karo asked carefully. "I didn't know any metal could burn let along singe my eyebrows off. We_ won_ the science fair and then the school nurse treated my burns and the local police had a few questions about how you had acquired lithium."

Azula reached down and pulled out her large color chart of The Periodic Table of the Elements. "Lithium isn't dangerous in small quantities." She spread the chart on the table. "When I told you to slowly remove it from the bottle of protective oil and slowly drop it in the water, you panicked when it began to smoke."

"You never understood the concept of a rehearsal with a stunt double." Karo closed his book. "Are you alright? You know _that Periodic Table from Hydrogen to Uranium _by which I mean backward and forwards." He took a moment as he tapped his pencil. "Please don't think I suddenly acquired chemistry talents - I read that off the chart."

"I live above a tea shop with my mother and my uncle in Ba Sing Se." Azula reached down and pulled out the _'Organic Molecule Modeling Kit'_ in its gray metal box. "My mother and I haven't been to the Fire Nation in years. I guess I'm trying to say I keep worrying that my life is going to change." Azula watched as an inept Karo played with the colored wooden balls and Tinkertoy like wooden bridge pieces. "All members of the Fire Nation royal family are expected to train as warriors."

"Your mother has no training." Karo began making a benzine ring in his hands. "I should have become a Fire Nation naval officer but I barf on trams on bumpy tracks. My mother has never pressured me to train as a warrior but she knows the full depths of the _Karo Zhao cowardice_." Karo pieced the sixth carbon atom in the ring. "A dentist freaked me out so much that I bit his hand."

"My mom and I fled the Fire Nation before I began to train as a fire bender but you know I have great power." Azula stood over the chart of the periodic table. "I don't want to become a fire bender."

"I can fire bend. I mean I can sort of fire bend out of reflex when something scares me."

"You can't join eight carbon atoms like that." Azula advised Karo. "That kit you're messing with cost me a fortune at the science center gift shop and your going to break it. If I had stayed with Zuko, my father would have tortured me into a fire bending killing machine of death."

"Isn't that an oxymoron?" Karo said didactically as he pulled the pieces of his model apart. "A killing machine is made to cause death. I can't see your mother taking you away from your life and even if she decided to return to the Fire Nation, I think you'd always have a home with your uncle."

* * *

"I have a dream." Azula held her bassoon as she sorted through her sheet music.

"What kind of dream?" Karo mumbled as he held the reed of his oboe in his mouth.

"The band hall will one day host musicians of artistic merit and great talent." Azula mumbled as she placed the reed of her bassoon in her mouth. "We won't play show tunes for the _Glee Club_."

The band hall was the school's main theaters and had two hundred and fifty seats for parents attending concerts or glee club performances. The band sat in the pit below the stage when the glee club put on musicals while the audience sat in rows of theater seats covered in brown fabric. The floors were finished in a dark brown oak, which also accented the walls making the hall ideally dark for the _Drama Club_ but not for musicians needing to read sheet music. On a walkway above the seats, the school janitor opened the heavy dark brown curtains to let daylight into the dark depths of the theater.

Karo wore thick glasses and adjusted them. He switched on the small lamp above his music stand. He sorted his music, tested his reed and played out a few notes of a notable musical tune.

"We've had the sheet music and been rehearsing for the high school musical since the beginning of the term." Karo looked into the bell of his oboe. "You already _kn__ew_ what was coming."

Azula adjusted her lamp and played with the sheet music. She didn't find it easy to move around on a small seat with forty other players in a small orchestra pit with a two meter long bassoon.

"I would have liked a musical that didn't have_ fleeing the evil oppressive Fire Nation _as a plot or one of the musicals that didn't have singing at all -_ symphonies _I think they're called." She looked down and fingered the keys of her musical machine. "This things needs a spike like the cello has."

"Why did you pick the bassoon?" Karo said between planned breaths.

"We have clarinets, saxophones, a string section, brass and you with the oboe. No one had chosen the bassoon in years and I wanted to be a little different."

"We have a drummer." Karo looked around at the drummer as he adjusted his drum kit. "Drummers are cool and I've never heard of a girl drummer. You could have tried out."

A slim middle aged band teacher with no hair and red cheeks tapped his baton on the podium. "As you all know; the school production of _The Sound of Music_ is scheduled for mid December so next week we'll begin live rehearsals with the _Glee Club_. While I support you in your desire to play serious music, _Azula_! We have to remember this is a_ high school_ band."

"Mr Dong has overheard your smart remarks." Karo waited for his cue from the conductor and played a long lonely note on the oboe to allow the band to tune up.

* * *

"Quit humming _that_ tune." Azula gritted her teeth. "I can't concentrate on our Pai Sho game."

Karo sipped his tea. "We don't have to wear the costumes and sing. No one will see us and I like musicals." He hummed another note and Azula glared at him. "I also usually lose when you have too much mental focus."

Azula and Karo played Pai Sho after almost every school day. Lady Ursa had come to regard him as a rather nice but somewhat oblivious member of the tea house family. She had heard how Karo and Azula had first met but had trouble understanding how their friendship had become so close. Lady Zhao had left the Fire Nation and her husband a decade ago to save her son from her depraved husband. She had done the same thing to save her daughter. Admiral Zhao had died in the Siege of the North. Her husband now languished in a Fire Nation prison and her son sat on the throne.

She felt guilt for leaving Zuko behind but time cruelly allowed her to rescue only one child from the evils of Fire Lord Ozai and his mad ambition. She had taken Azula because while Azula had shown great power as a fire bender; she had the great mental fragility that came with her great intelligence.

"Do you need the cheer leaders to cheer you on?" Azula coaxed Karo.

The tea house hummed to the conversations of the crowd and a young waitress made her way through the gingham cloth covered tables balancing two plates of fried fish and chips. Lady Ursa made her way carefully past her and headed to the 'Pai Sho Table' at the back next to the kitchen entrance.

Karo placed his tile on the table.

Azula picked up one of her tiles. "Botan _and her cheerleaders__ didn't help _the _Northwoods __Badger Moles_ win football games." She turned the tile between her fingers. "Our football team had fumble fingers in the playoff game despite cheer. Big Moe couldn't wrap his fingers around the ball even though it was a perfect throw - a glove might have been more useful than a skinny red head."

"I don't have problems with her at all."

Karo noticed Ursa walking between the tables with a great sense of purpose and this ended the current conversation. She insisted on dressing in Fire Nation regal garb and stood out against the tan wainscoting of the seating area of the tea shop.

"Du...dum..." Karo hummed a menacing dramatic theme because had thought Ursa moved quietly, and it reminded him of the way the special effects wizards in movies made shark fins move in the water. "Dun...dun..."

"The maternal unit?" Azula turned around.

"Hi guys," Lady Ursa said sweetly, leaned down and kissed Azula on her cheek, "you have such a busy life, I only see you at the tea house."

"We had breakfast together." Azula informed her mother.

Lady Ursa patted Karo on the head. "I know you feel uncomfortable about the future visit of Zuko. I know only what he said on the telegram. He mentioned no date. If it makes you feel better, the winter is closing in and our harsh winters and the fierce storms make difficult to travel internationally. I doubt if he'll turn up all of the sudden on one of his airships."

"What if you want to move back to the Fire Nation?" Azula frankly admitted. "I like it here. I like my school although I_ hate_ Botan - the leader of the cheer-leading squad. My friends live here. If I go to the Fire Nation, I'll be a second wheel and I'll be a princess and I'll never have a chance to show what I can do on my own merit."

"What do you think - Karo?" Lady Ursa sat down between them. "You're her best friend."

"I'd miss her Mrs. K." Karo took a moment to catch his breath. "Zuko and the Avatar might help bring about a new era of peace. Azula is scared you'll pressure her to return and fulfill her duties as a princess. I imagine the money is good but your not your own person. She doesn't want _that_ future; she wants to make it on her own merit."

"I have no plans to leave the tea shop. Put all thoughts of that out of your minds." Lady Ursa looked at both of them and put her arms around them. "Zuko is my son and I love him. I'm his mother. I don't want the court life either but I wish to know my son and so I'll visit from time to time. I won't take the _Ba Sing Se Science Fair_ champ for two years in a row and make her change schools. You won't have to go to football and basketball games alone."

"Thanks Mrs K." Karo always called Lady Ursa _'__Mrs. K__'_. Her last name was Kai, and Karo had made it the name she went by in the tea house.

* * *

Snow fell down over Ba Sing Se as Azula walked up to the Zhao townhouse. Lady and Karo Zhao lived in one of the nice, warm brick townhouse complexes that had sprawled over what had been swamp before the War. They both lived in a comfortable middle class neighborhood and the neat red ceramic planters on either side of the steps sold that message.

She rapped the brass door knocker.

She heard steps on heavy wooden steps and Karo opened the door a few moments later.

"By the time we get home, I'll have to shovel this." Karo opened the door and wrapped the hood of his gray jacket around his head. "The flowers in the planters have definitely croaked." He stepped out slowly and closed the door.

Azula slapped her hands against her sides. "I come from a sub tropical climate." She had the hood of her red jacket done up as far as it would go and her amber eyes peered out warily from a fringe of fine fur. She looked at her black mittens and then turned around. "We have to walk two and a half blocks to school - how long does it take to walk?"

"I don't know - five minutes?" Karo kicked the snow on the ground as he walked beside Azula and onto the sidewalk.

"When we started fall term in August, it took five minutes," Azula watched over the white landscape of the city now covered in falling snow, "in the snow of winter, twelve hours." Azula hated and complained about the cold but the snow had a beautiful side to it. It looked white and clean and the white flakes brightened the dull sky. She breathed in and smelled the new fallen snow as she listened to how it made her steps crackle and muffled the city noises. "We'll be climbing over three meter tall snow mountains to get into the front door."

"The city should settle their labor disputes before we depend on the city to clear the snow." Karo added. "At least if the Fire Nation attacked, the snow would act like tank traps."

"My dad planned to burn this city to the ground."

A tram made a sloshing sound as it slowly rode along the tracks.

"My dad had quite the resume, _a curriculum vitae_ of failure." Azula slapped her gloved hands together to warm them. "He tried to breach the Great Wall with a huge mechanical drill and the Avatar destroyed that machine. He wanted to fire bomb the cities of the Earth Kingdom from airships and for some reason this didn't work out. The Avatar defeated him while, depending on what paper you read, the Earth Kingdom defeated the airship army or the airships flew into the ground because someone tried to sneak a smoke on _the hydrogen_ filled balloons."

"We spent a night in the subways during the return of _Sozin's Comet_." Karo asked quietly. "Lucky for us, he made a huge show of his departure for his secret airship base and his people ratted him out." He let out a breath which turned white in the cold air. "We came close."

"When I think about the fall of my father; I feel like a civilian." Azula faced the crosswalk and pressed the button to raise the crosswalk flag. "I have no idea what actually took place that night. The Avatar defeated my father but who destroyed the airship fleet on the ground? The newspapers gave credit to _King Bumi of Omashu and his Earth Kingdom army_. Iroh said they had help from the Avatar's teachers including my brother. I'm left with many answers to a few simple questions about the War."

The black sign with the little white pedestrian figure wearing a top hat popped out from the box on the pole with a click. It stuck out so as to be visible to traffic.

"We may never know." Karo began to cross the street. "Had the Fire Nation succeeded with _the Drill_ and taken Ba Sing Se, we wouldn't be around to ponder history. We'd be prisoners of the Fire Nation and mining coal trying to survive."

* * *

Karo had a long piece of paper on the hardwood floor of the gym and sat with a collection of tempura paint cans around him when Azula found him.

Azula played with the dimmer switch trying her best to find an annoying pattern of dimming that would make Karo look up from his work.

"Hello Azula." Karo didn't look up from his work. "Basketball season begins next Tuesday and I promised Coach Zhin I'd have the banner done and up before then. We have to let our rivals at _Kings Crossing High - the Kings Rooks_ - that they are entering _our house!_" Karo shook his fist in defiance.

Azula liked _Northwoods_ because it had a great science program. Karo liked it because it had many interesting things to do and brought him out of his shell. He believed in the rivalry between the two schools.

"Hi Karo." Botan said happily and walked past Azula in a well calculated move designed to annoy her. Botan had to take care: cheer leaders bolstered morale, they entertained the audience at games and added color. Azula was a science dork, but also an academic all star and dazzling in her brilliance. _Northwoods_ placed high value on mathematics and science and had took pride in their academic standing among other schools. "Hi _Azula!_" Botan said bitterly in passing.

Azula dimmed the lights.

"Excuse me!" Botan protested. "We can't see in here."

Azula turned the dimmer back up. "Do you know the inventor of the light bulb had to try six thousand times until her found the right material for the filament."

"Are you quite finished acting weird?" Botan stood next to Karo and admired the banner.

Azula cleared her throat, walked along the court and picked up a basketball to take a few free throws.

"I wondered if your father were sister and brother and had to try six thousand times before they turned out a cheer leader." Azula sank the shot with her characteristic grace and accuracy.

Botan huffed.

"I like the banner a lot." She told Karo.

"I asked you to come in so if I needed to make any tweaks, I could do that before Tuesday." Karo explained and Azula made another free throw and sank it. "I'll finish it today and we can hang it up after school on Monday before your practices."

"No...I really like it." Botan nodded as she admired Karo's careful work and eye for color.

Azula walked up to Botan dribbling the basketball. "Why don't women basketball teams have guys cheer leaders?"

"Please," Karo pleaded and threw out his arms, "no fighting."

Azula dribbled the ball. "Maybe Botan could reveal her _true_ self."

"You're the one who doesn't dress like a normal girl!" Botan leaned over and yelled at Azula. "I have the latest Earth Kingdom fashions and you come to school dressed like a Fire Nation soldier. Has a guy ever asked you out or do you always have to ask your cousin out to dances?"

Karo sat down and put his head into his hands.

"Free throw knock down!" Azula threw the basketball into Botan's arms.

"What does this_ 'thing' _do?" Karo looked at a piece of brass scientific apparatus. "Will it hurt me - _the more important question._" Karo had come with Azula to the physics lab of the school to work on her idea for a science fair project. He often did this on Saturdays because he only had to listen to her interminable lectures on the nature of light and hold a clipboard. The alternative was shoveling the walk outside the house.

* * *

"I can't believe I lost 21 to 20 to a _cheer leader_." Azula adjusted a thick thumbscrew on the side of the array of metal bits. One side of the box with the thumbscrew had an opening, wires came out of the top and bottom and the brass box had a fresh shine to it.

"She's an athlete." Karo shrugged as he held a metal clipboard in his hands. "What can I say,_ but_ you did very well against someone who has done sports all her life."

"Eyebrows have never grown in right." Karo felt them. "I may have undiagnosed cancer of the eyebrow."

"We all can make contributions to medical science - you're death will provide insight into eyebrow cancer." Azula let go of the thumbscrew and tapped her lip.

Azula held up a sheet of glass attached to a metal handle. "Everybody thinks light is a wave. That opinion has prevailed since before the War and like all well established opinions; it deserves a good test." She placed it in a groove machined into the side of another box with a hinged piece of gold foil attached to a metal box. The sliding glass faced the open brass box with wires.

"Are you selling me on the idea of_ not having eyebrows?_"

"I've cobbled together a 'gold leaf electroscope' _for the impatient_." Azula looked over another box and adjusted it so that the glass windows on either side of it would line up with the white screen on the opposite wall of the lab. "We have known since ancient times that matter is made out of bits called atoms."

"Sure." Karo nodded.

"In recent years, we have found out that atoms have smaller bits - one kind of bit is a negatively charged particle called an _electron_." Azula held out a glass tube while she stepped on a switch on the floor and a bright light came out of the brass box with the wires coming out of it and shone on through the box with the gold foil and brass knob on top. Karo heard a loud spitting hum and smelled burning as the light came on. "We know light is a wave although we have no idea what it travels through as space is a vacuum and even air is mostly empty space."

She rubbed the glass rod on her black robe and touched the brass knob on the box with the foil and the screen showed an image as the foil rose to a right angle to its metal frame.

"The glass rod has a static charge from rubbing against my clothes." Azula drew the glass rod away but the image on the screen didn't change.

"Watch this mind blowing demonstration!" Azula lifted up the glass plate on the side of the box facing the bright light. "The light source is an arc light and the glass allows light to pass through - but not all light."

The image changed as the glass rose. The foil collapsed back against the metal frame.

"Alright..." Karo said hesitantly.

"The light I used is a basic arc light - the kind used in lighthouses." Azula pressed a foot pedal and the humming and light faded away. "The arc lamp uses a spark and gives off light and ultraviolet light just like the Sun. The glass plate blocks the UV light but when I lifted it, the UV rays struck the charged gold foil."

"Why do_ I _have the clipboard?"

"You don't understand!" Azula grasped Karo's collar and spoke with frightening enthusiasm, almost cackling. Karo had seen her excited and enthusiastic before and in the end he had first degree burns to his forehead and his eyebrows had gone missing - presumed dead. "If light is a wave, what is waving? We know the electron is a particle and the gold foil stood up because it had more electrons than the stand. The glass blocked UV light but when the UV light hit the gold foil, the UV light kind of drains the charge. Don't you see! Light comes in bits and knocks bits out of the metal!"

"See!" Karo answered back. "I think you could make your point better if you had cheer leaders."

"Don't make me take measures."

"Knowing my luck, my brother will show up for the science fair and sit down in the auditorium and ask _all_ the dumb questions." Azula held large cardboard diagrams at her side. The were a meter square with very carefully laid out diagrams and formulas drawn on them. She stood in front of Karo and dropped her brown bag lunch on the lunch table. "I spend half my waking hours this weekend working on my science projects but the science board insists on seeing my work. Half of the scientific method consists of a process called _'peer review'_."

Karo rummaged like a well trained ape and found a nice papaya in Azula's bag lunch. "I know. I spent much of it holding the clipboard."

"Do you know what_ 'peer review' _actually means?" Azula placed her diagrams on the lunch table and sat down. "In science, it means _'we think you're a lying ass'_ so prove us wrong or we begin mudslinging." She peered in the brown bag. "Academic work and political life are the refuge of the psychotic. Mind spotting me a few coins for the lunch special?"

Karo dropped a few silver pieces on the table. "How is your effort to overturn physics actually proceeding?"

"Light is a particle, not a wave." Azula scooped up the coins.

"Why can't it be both?" Karo peeled the adhesive label off the papaya. "I can see light, never have I seen a piece or a wave of light; why does it have to live up to our common sense?"

"Keep that thought." Azula walked off to buy the shrimp ramen noodle special.

Karo began eating the papaya.

A football player named Iokav sat next to Karo. He was a tall and handsome boy of sixteen with strawberry blond hair and a fit and robust physique. Had the War continued, he'd have made a fine swordsman.

"I want to ask Botan out." He said as he placed his cafeteria tray down on Azula's diagrams. "I wondered if you've asked her out. I know you two are friends but your friends with that weird science chick from the Fire Nation." He took out the chopsticks and broke them apart. "As a man of honor, I wanted to ask you if you two were going out."

"We've known each other since elementary school." Karo explained. "I tutored you in Literature and we've been friends so I'd never keep you out of the loop. Botan and I are friends." Karo smiled meekly. "I wish you the best of luck, she's a nice person."

"Thanks guy." Iokav patted him on the back. Iokav came from a family that had fled the Fire Nation thirty years ago and for many of the same reasons people fled it today - political oppression. Iokav and Karo had come from the _'Fire Nation Colonies'_ now the_ Dominion of Suihan_. Azula's mother had come from the same former colony. The people of the Henwa Islands - as the Fire Nation called their islands - spoke a totally different language and belonged to a totally different ethnic group.

Karo had never seen anyone from the _Southern Water Tribe_. The Earth Kingdom's largest city had a few denizens from the Northern Water Tribe but they blended into the human backdrop of the city multitudes.

A young tall, lanky man sat down at the cafeteria table dressed in the blue jacket of a person from the Water Tribe.

"I'm Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe." The man announced. "Uncle Iroh told me you and Azula would be here."

Karo leaned back. "Okay?"

"Iokav...you have your tray on my science fair project!" Azula sat down with her tray.

Iokav was one of those gentle giants and he blushed and moved his tray. Do you know the Water Tribe guy?" He lifted the tray and Azula picked up the cards.

Azula sorted her cards. "No?"

"Suihanni ko?" Karo asked.

"I'm Sokka of the Water Tribe." The tall lanky fellow replied. "I don't speak Suihanese although my girlfriend speaks Kyoshinese and I'm trying to learn."

Karo and Azula nodded.

"I came with my girlfriend to visit General Iroh." Sokka announced.

"I've missed out on a lot." Azula spoke from behind a card. "Are you attending high school here or did you bribe the hall monitor?" Azula examined the blue hide and fringe of Sokka's coat. "How did you get past the office? They caught me ducking past the office counter to cut class and gave me detention."

"I strolled right in." Sokka demonstrated with his fingers on the palm of his hand.

"You have a sword." Iokav exclaimed. "You can't have _that!_ They cart you away in the paddy wagon for that."

"I crafted this sword myself." Sokka said with much pride. "I trained with the great swordsman Piandao - one of the members of the White Lotus. We fought to defeat Fire Lord Ozai along with Zuko on the day _Sozin's Comet_ returned."

"Okay." Azula peered from behind the card she held up and made an effort to sound sarcastic.

Karo scratched his head. "I knew Iroh was a war hero but we're high school students." He pointed to his eyebrows. "When Sozin's Comet returned, Azula was burning off my eyebrows with Lithium. I have to ask why you came here?"

"We came to visit Iroh to see Ba Sing." Sokka said cheerfully. "Zuko plans to show up after the new year and visit Ba Sing Se for himself."

One of the oddest things happened. Sokka heard Suihan spoken between members of the Fire Nation royalty. Sokka had visited Suihan speaking island - the one Hama had persecuted. He had heard the sweet sounding and romantic sounding language. He had not expected to hear Fire Nation nobles speak it. Karo, the large blond man and Azula sang out in a language perfect for singing.

"We had no part on the War." Azula said in Fire Nation Chinese. "All of us are refugees."

"I'm sorry." Sokka grew sad.

"I came with my mother because she feared what my father might do to me. Karo's mother left an abusive father. Iokav's grandfather couldn't trade freely." Azula let Sokka think for a moment.

"I fought the Fire Nation." Sokka answered back patiently.

"Zuko stayed with his father." Iokav answered back. "Excuse me for being slow. Maybe I have had a few too many hits in football. Why should I trust Fire Lord Zuko. His great grandfather stomped on our traditions. We finally left because we could not practice our religion because Azulon decided the belief in the One True god Iaveh was treason."

"There is no God but God and Reason is His Prophet." Karo said in a surprisingly confident voice. "All of us go to the same church." Karo pointed to Azula, himself and Iokav. "You have brought up much bitterness and the visit of Zuko won't help much."

"I give you Reason so as to come to know me better." Azula quoted. "The Fire Nation suppressed The Theory of Evolution because it said we were all the same species. They disliked the idea it defied their myths. Does Zuko believe this?" Azula placed her huge cards level on the table. "We are God's way of revealing the Universe. Of course my mom believed this as well as other values she had learned from her Suihanese heritage, reason, fairness and justice and freedom. Damn her stupidity."

"What about other spirits?" Sokka decided to quietly challenge.

"What about them?" Azula shot back. "Reason is our revelation. We have to use it to explain our lives." Azula said as she rose. "God wanted a Democracy where anyone with the time and effort could find something out about the Universe."

Iokav rose up. "I can Earth Bend." He spoke as in a warning.

"I want no trouble." Sokka backed up. "I came in peace."

* * *

The Zhao's lived in a fancy townhouse in a row of nice, neat brick townhouses across the street and down the block from the tea shop. Azula found the small two bedroom townhouse a comfortable place to hang out because Lady Zhao had appointed it with nice furniture and had converted the third bedroom into a large library to house a collection of Karo's graphic novels, records and reference books. Azula had a fondness for two the large, red velvet armchairs set under the back window of the room.

Azula sat down with the latest part of the trilogy - the fifth part of _The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy_ - a volume known as _Mostly Harmless_. She adjusted the lamp on the small stand next to her chair to obtain the best light.

"Kyoshi Island lies at 54 degrees south of the Equator." Karo had a volume of the encyclopedia bound in a burgundy red leather cover as he leafed through it. He had heard of a place called 'Kyoshi Island' but knew little about it. Since Sokka's girlfriend came from that country; Karo wanted to satisfy his natural curiosity. "About two million people call the islands home and they speak Kyoshinese."

"When I head home in an hour or so; I'll hear someone greet me as 'Azula - kun.' Sokka and his girlfriend are staying with us."

Karo sat down with the encyclopedia in the other red armchair. "They believe their island was created by Avatar Kyoshi to save their people from the oppression of the Earth Kingdom."

"And you want to visit Kyoshi Island?" Azula fiddled with a pencil in her left hand. "One of the reasons you don't know much about Kyoshi Island because not much ever happens there. They didn't play a role in the War and the place is the kind of place where _'electricity'_ is not yet a term used in regular conversation. Kyoshi Island has one claim to fame - the Kyoshi Warriors - near mythological warriors trained in martial arts."

"What about the Kyoshi Warriors?" Karo held up the page with a colored picture of a traditional Kyoshi Warrior in full battle dress.

"Bring that picture with you if our high school glee club ever decides to stage _The Mikado_." Azula said dismissively. "I'd love to see the costume maker meltdown when she had to make that outfit. I still don't have all the facts about their role in the War but Iroh told me a few things. They decided to fight the Fire Nation after my brother burned down their home village." Azula placed the pencil on the round cherry colored table with a sharp rap. "They set out to come to Ba Sing Se and became prisoners of the Fire Nation after Zuko's girlfriend and her two friends defeated them. The Kyoshi Warriors spent the remainder of the Great War in a POW camp."

"So you'd say the _Kyoshi Warriors_ were _'Mostly Harmless'_?"

Azula winced. "You...no I won't say anything." Azula returned to her book and murmured. "I admire the work you put into that joke." Azula put down the book.

* * *

On Saturday mornings, Azula often spent time with Karo at the local Nickelodeon because they had two for one movie tickets. This Saturday morning, the snow had fallen all night and Azula found herself confined to the tea shop. She made the most of the time to complete as much homework as possible at the Pai Sho table where she often sat with Karo after they had returned from school. She looked out the window next to the table and saw nothing but heavy snow.

The Fire Nation had tried to take the city - twice. Azula had known of the offensive lead by Uncle Iroh and his sudden withdrawal. The Fire Lord Azulon explained this away as the grief of a father who had lost his only son. Azula knew better. The offensive had begun late because of the lack of building up reserves and the siege had run into October - far too late to plan to take the city. Ba Sing Se had violent, cold and viscous winters and Iroh knew he had breached the outer wall and his armies would freeze to death in the cold trying to cross the fields between the two great walls of the great city state.

Karo walked into the tea shop.

"Good morning Iroh!" He bowed as he took off his gloves and backpack. He wore a red fur hat but in the few minutes it had taken him to walk to the tea shop, snow had piled on it. He removed the hat and Iroh carefully shook the snow off of it. "Are you here to see my friends Sokka and Suki?"

"I didn't come over expecting to, no." Karo undid his backpack, placed it on the floor and then his jacket and Iroh graciously took it. "I shoveled our walk and decided after nearly freezing my _good and plenty off_, nothing would be nicer than a big mug of tea and some homework."

"Sure." Iroh smiled pleasantly. "Azula is at her usual seat so I'll bring you some tea."

Azula watched Karo walk across the tea shop through the winter gas lit gloom. The mantles of the overhead lamps struggled to emit more than a feeble glow over the tables of the tea house.

"How cold is it?" Azula asked over the dark blue cover of a high school physics text. "The dorky coonskin cap doesn't usually come out unless your ears are in danger of freezing off."

"Stop wearing the fur hat, you look like a dorky barbarian." Karo quoted Azula. "You told me as that last winter and then asked me how many platypus bears gave up their lives for it. None did: the hat is beaver pelts."

"You lack the broad hairy chest needed to make a good barbarian." Azula motioned to a wooden chair with her pencil. "Have a seat. My mom decided to cook a special Water Tribe breakfast for Uncle Iroh's guests. As you know, I'm frightfully allergic to fish so I'm in the tea shop eating scones and jam."

Karo placed his backpack down and took the seat.

"Drink and enjoy." Iroh placed a cup of tea in front of Karo along with a small napkin. "Can I get you some scones or one of our fine Komodo Chicken sandwiches?"

"No...thanks for the tea." Karo held up his hand. "I'm fine."

"I should say our staff cooks the special breakfast." Azula corrected herself. "My mom is catching up on the stories of the War with Suki and Sokka. What plans did you have for today?"

"I came here after I shoveled the walk." Karo sipped the tea and then grabbed the green glass honey dispenser and dribbled honey into it. "I will go home and shovel the walk, then do homework and then go to sleep." Karo wrapped his hands around the mug of tea. "I thought you had plans to head over to school and work on your science experiment."

Azula twirled her pencil. "I have doubts: the photoelectric effect might not be weird enough for the physics audience." She placed her book on the table and looked out the window framed by green drapes. "In the post War era, people demand weird, seemingly reason defying results." Azula held up her hands and spread them in the air as if announcing a show. "What did that exhibition of Dadaism teach you?"

"I'm overqualified to draw things?" Karo and Azula had gone to see the exhibition a month ago at The Ba Sing Se Museum of Modern Art - a building made of concrete, stuccoed in brilliant white and shaped like a giant slice of pie pierced here and there by oval or diamond shaped windows. "I always thought I expressed myself well enough without feeling the need to draw disturbing figures being impaled by bayonets."

"I have an experiment that may produce results to astonish the world." Azula explained to Karo.

Karo shook his head nervously as he reached into his backpack for his math text. "You once told me it was_ possible _to make a bomb the size of a phone booth that could destroy a city. You reassured me I would be an old man by the time the people of the_ Scientific Archipelago _understood enough of the nature of matter to actually make it work. Since the last War saw each side seize upon all the most advanced ways of killing people; I haven't begun to save for retirement. The day after I retire, I'll see a huge mushroom cloud as the city I live in becomes rubble at the hands of whatever powers in the future want to kill each other."

"I find that surprisingly dark coming from you." Azula had many occasions to admire Karo's talent for art and music. He had a humble, understated style favoring pastels but in thought and deed, Karo was an extroverted optimist. "Not all art is dark art - even in this day."

"I find the long winters depressing." Karo apologized.

"I came up with another idea after reading a paper on radioactive decay." Azula picked up a napkin. "The gold plate electroscope experiment proves light is a particle and knocks bits of matter out of the foil."

"I'm with you." Karo said cautiously. "Thus far I can understand. Photons and electrons are particles."

"What if I can make a particle behave like a wave?" Azula raised her finger. "I could try it with electrons but the apparatus costs a good deal of money and since we know almost nothing save the mass of the electron; we would have to do many months of pure research. We don't have the money or time."

"What are you driving at?"

"_You _said that photons don't have to obey our notions of common sense. You didn't say that quite so elegantly but I rephrased it." Azula ran her finger around the edge of the red mug that held her tea. "Maybe they don't. Maybe a photon can be a wave and a particle. Physicists have played with the photoelectric effect for years and still haven't decided if light is a particle or wave. What if I turn the problem on its head and make a device that makes light behave like a wave and set it up so it can only pass one bit or particle of light at a time?" Azula wore a wry smile. "It could be a lot of fun to see what will happen. If I can make particles interfere, I'd have done something weirder than any modern artist."

* * *

The Ba Sing Se school system had high schools that specialized in different specialties. _Northwoods_ had a full science program and Azula was the star pupil in the program. Karo found her in the physics lab with a pencil in her hands and a notepad next to a pile of metal and glass pieces beside her on the large, heavy wooden lab table.

Karo cleared his throat. "I'm taking Sokka and Suki on a tour of our school."

"Very well." Azula waved her hand. "Enjoy your spare as a tour guide for the school. Usually the principle takes the parents and students on those tours."

Buzz, buzz, thump!

Sokka pointed to a glowing glass globe. He looked at the traces of the blue glow and the orange of the filaments in the narrow neck of the tube. "What does this do?"

"We call it a cathode ray tube or CRT," Azula told Sokka as she looked back, "it has an electron beam inside and gives off X - Rays." She turned around on her stool. "I would turn it off unless you have a lead vest on or you want to really reduce your chances of having children and developing obscure cancers."

Click!

"Sounds dangerous." Sokka stood back a pace. "Why do you keep it around if it can do such things?"

"The yellow sign on the wall reads _'Caution: Use Protective...blah, blah, blah'_." Azula waited for Sokka to read the sign. "We seldom use it. Ba Sing Se University hand built it and when they had finished with it, donated it to our school. Our teacher uses it for demonstrations and such but the CRT isn't used in high school physics projects."

"What are_ you _working on?" Suki leaned over the pile of parts.

"I'm building a _double slit _interferometer." Azula glanced nervously as Sokka wandered the lab. "I'll finish by lunch but I need to get a better understanding of the problem I've set out for myself. Anyone know where I can get a low pressure sodium vapor lamp?" Azula glanced around. "I guess not."

"I'll show you the library." Karo motioned for Sokka to follow. "Azula can get a bit cranky when she's working."

"I heard that!" Azula slid around her stool and faced the pile of parts that was the start of her work. "I know where you live."

Azula sat down at the lunch table and passed her lunch bag to Karo and Karo produced a few coins. Sokka and Suki witnessed this ritual and had no idea what it meant.

"I still don't have a sodium lamp." Azula tossed the brightly colored _Shenzen Science Supply_ catalog on the table. "Have a boo at that catalog and see what you can find." She commanded Karo as she headed toward the lunch line at the counter.

"You two are so lucky," Suki told Karo as she began to pick through a bag of crisps she had bought from a vending machine. "I never went to a fancy, modern school like this and Sokka's grandmother taught school in his village."

"I never had a choice." Karo said in the manner of someone who had no idea what to say next. "The law here states you must attend at least eight years of school so the tax payers think something is being done with their school taxes. Most parents preserve their sanity by keeping you in school for twelve years."

Karo picked up the colorful book. "I never expected a scientific supply catalog to be so thick." He leafed through the pages. "Listen to this: _'Pure uranium slugs: package of 10 - 250 gram slugs for 1 pound, four shillings plus shipping and handling.'_ In case you didn't know, that is roughly one gold and four silver."

"I'm a pence short." Azula sat down with her noodle based food and what the cafeteria sold as iced tea. "I have one pound, three shillings and fifteen pence in my bank account." Azula held out her hand and Karo gave her the book. "One of the more irksome things about our money system is that change is octal and hexadecimal: if you have one pound, that's eight shillings, one shilling is sixteen pence and that bag of crisps cost five pence."

"You can buy uranium?" Sokka said in amazement.

"Do you want the item number?" Azula asked.

"No thanks." Suki intervened. "What would we do with it?" She gave Sokka a scolding glace.

* * *

"The light in here is freaky." Botan said carefully because the phrase_ 'like you are' _came to mind. Azula wasn't freaky but she was brilliant and athletic and Botan found her intimidating. Botan had coped with her deep teenage insecurity about her appearance and guys by conformity. Azula didn't care and didn't make any compromises and Botan sensed a woman of great courage and power.

The lab had the window shades drawn and a aquarium bulb shaped sodium lamp gave off a horrid pumpkin colored glow that deleted the color of everything Botan saw. The light gave off enough light to fill the room but gave everything a supremely ugly orange glow.

Azula had not even heard the lab door open and because she had the shade drawn couldn't see out the frosted glass of the door window.

Azula had a brass adjustment screw in her hands as she watched a spectrum of colors through a frost like diffraction grating.

"What brings you here?" Azula growled. "Don't touch anything on the table. I haven't checked all my wiring for faults. On the other hand - care to play cheer leader electric fault patrol?"

"We have the _Solstice Dance_ in a few weeks." Botan held her hands clasped together. "I want to ask Karo out."

Azula stopped for a moment. "Can you turn on the lights?"

Botan flipped the switch and the room filled with the familiar glow of incandescent lights.

"My rods and cones have gone all screwy but I didn't think the effect had neurological consequences." Azula hit the large double pole switch. It made a small arc and crack and the sodium lamp dimmed. "Can you repeat yourself? Azula leaned over the table in Botan's direction.

"I think Karo is sweet and so I want to ask him to the dance." Botan suddenly appeared nervous. "Are you two a couple? I never see you two out at dances buttyou hang together. Karo does our lights and music but you never have danced with him."

"We're cousins." Azula raised her left eyebrow. "I didn't know you had to have my permission to ask him out to a dance."

"You scare me." Botan admitted rather frankly. "Fire bending scares me."

"Boo!" Azula made a scary face. Azula sensed Botan had deep issues with fire benders and often felt it a shame so many people feared the craft. She couldn't blame them as her nation had abused the power to conquer much of the world. "Karo is a nice guy. Enjoy his company."

"I had expected you to say something insulting about him." Botan shifted her feet. "Sometimes you can get snarky."

Azula nodded. "Snarky?"

* * *

Azula spent the supper hour in the lab examining her 'double slit' device. The dimensions had to be exact for the device to work and Azula had to inspect it with a microscope. She wrote down notes to document her findings.

She heard the door open. She saw the outline of Karo in the bright lights of the hallway.

"Azula!" Karo said between panicked gasps.

Azula looked up from the large microscope made of metal and finished in black matte enamel. "What has you in a huff?"

"Botan asked me out to the _Solstice Dance._"

Azula placed her eye back on the eyepiece of the microscope. "It happens. You two are friends for reasons I can't fully fathom."

"What do I do?" Karo closed the door of the lab.

"Maybe you should go to the dance?" Azula wrote down some detail with a pencil. "She came here this morning during my spare and asked me if she could ask you out. I told her to_ go ahead_."

"I told her I'd think about it and gave her my phone number." Karo began to calm down. "Why would she ask me out when she hangs with all those jocks?"

Maybe she likes freckled Indo - Europeans?" Azula waited for a look of confusion but Karo was Suihanese and knew he spoke an _Indo European_ language. He had a bit of an accent to his Earth Kingdom Chinese. "You could say no."

"I can't spike the head cheer leader!" Karo pleaded. "A lowly commoner can't refuse such an opportunity - it would ruin me socially!"

"Be brave." Azula smiled. "You have a date and a popular girl finds you attractive. I wish I knew what_ that_ felt like." Azula spoke with a hint of regret. "As a member of gay nation; I wouldn't mind holding Botan close to my average figure but I'll live my fantasy through you."

"I know almost nothing about cheer leading."

Azula stood up from her work and patted Karo on the shoulder. "You could explain how Chinese cheers rhyme on the final syllable. Suihan cheers, if they have any, rhyme on the first syllable of the line if they rhyme at all - Suihan is fussy about rhyming schemes from what I have learned."

"You had me all the way up to _'you'_." Karo noticed the lab lights were on and the room wasn't drenched in the pink light of Azula's lamp. "I'll muddle through. My social standing may rest on this dance but high school isn't forever."

"Status - o- geddon in a few weeks?" Azula said dryly. "You won't screw up. I don't get along with Botan because I have nothing in common with her. My mom also says I have a cantankerous personality - she understates things. You have a date with a decent girl and if you are your normal decent self, you'll both have a good time."

"All right." Karo let out a sigh. "I'll say yes."


End file.
